Marketing automation systems—and really, even the simplest of email marketing platforms—enable a level of “personalization” for outbound email marketing. That “personalization” usually begins and ends (sadly) with inserting the first name of the prospect or customer receiving the email. And even more tragic is often data is not structured or clean enough to do even that – but that’s a topic for a different day. Let’s assume we know John’s name – and more. What can we do with the information we have?

Lack of personalization is often an issue of a “spray and pray” mentality towards email marketing, or a simple lack of time and resources to do true segmentation. The technology exists today to perform very sophisticated personalization. Email content can go far beyond just using the prospect or client’s first name and company name. Vertical marketing is the next logical step, followed by behavioral marketing (more about this in the future).

Think about your typical experience with Amazon or Netflix. Both of these websites (or really, services), provide you with personalized information when you visit. It provides you with suggestions based on your previous visits. Now compare that experience with a standard marketing email you receive:

“Dear John or Jane, respond to this CTA and go to this page, just like everybody else, to download this piece of content marketing or this trial software.”

Maybe you will do something, maybe you won’t.

But what if you received an email that said,

“Dear John or Jane, I see that you read our blog post on personalized marketing. I thought you might be interested in this infographic on how personalized marketing is paying off for other companies in your industry. If you’re ready to see how powerful personalized marketing can be, take a test drive of our software. See what you can do with the power of personalized marketing.”

If you are like most people, you will take further action. In fact, a study by Hubspot found that targeted (or personalized) calls to action leads to a 42% higher view-to-submission rate than generic CTAs.

Yes, conducting personalized campaigns with specific CTAs, landing pages and copy will take a larger investment in time than will a standard email campaign. But with a 42% potential increase in conversions, that’s likely time very well spent. Moving forward, look at the types of information you are (or can) collect about your prospects and how you can begin to tweak your approach based on what you know about them. Try some A/B tests to see what effect different levels of personalization and messaging is working and driving the most value.

What are some of the best examples of personalized campaigns that you’ve seen? Please share!

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